Even as they watched the flames in the Jagger Library being subdued, Nikki Crowster and her colleagues were not overwhelmed by a future that was suddenly unknown. “We were determined to get our library back,” she says today of the veld fire that swept down the slopes of Devil’s Peak and onto the upper campus of the University of Cape Town (UCT) on April 18 last year. Crowster is the university’s director of information systems & resources.
The fire engulfed the campus, seemingly targeting the Jagger where it destroyed precious pieces of research, irreplaceable books and writings. “There was a sense of disbelief,” she says. “You cannot reason or negotiate with fire. It was taking away more than the physical building, it was taking away years of hard work, our sense of memory.”
Crowster and her colleagues realised it was not only important to rebuild the library, but to recapture the spirit of an institution. “It was a place to nurture, a place of support,” she says.
The restoration and rebuilding of the Jagger has truly been a labour of love. With much of the library building (along with other parts of the university) reduced to ashes, the task of salvaging priceless works seemed insurmountable. But today the picture is very different, even life-changing.
The library, now named the Jagger Reading Room, was built in the 1930s and provided students with access to sought-after and exclusive reading material. To remember that day in April when everything changed, there is an exhibition that displays the road to recovery. Within 43 days of the fire, the rescue of the few pockets of books not destroyed by fire and water was complete — in some cases from where water had been knee-deep.
“Fire, water and mould were our biggest enemies,” says Crowster. “We lost large volumes of irreplaceable, priceless work.” At hand were 13,000 crates of material that had to be handled by 2,600 volunteers. The recovery was a monumental effort, lauded by Unesco.
The fire catapulted the notion of book conservation smack-bang into the public limelight
— Nikki Crowster
As if the fire were not bad enough, UCT also had to deal with the psychological pressures of Covid. “Besides the exhausting task of saving what we could, there was always the presence of the pandemic. Also, it was a case of the volume of recovery that had to be done vs the resources we had at such short notice. But despite all the challenging aspects, we got excellent results in the long-term recovery process,” says Crowster.
The fire highlighted issues, often priorities, where implementation had been negligible; these included transformation. “The fire accelerated conversations about how we deal with bodies of work from colonial times,” says Crowster.
“We have to ask how we rebuild the archive and the delicate balance of incorporating alternative narratives to colonial materials.” She says the African Studies Library — part of the Jagger — was important to strengthen the alternative narrative on Africa.
The Fees Must Fall and Rhodes Must Fall movements revealed a desire by students for a new way of dealing with the past. Another hot topic is the need for book conservation.
“The fire catapulted the notion of book conservation smack-bang into the public limelight,” says Crowster. “It’s also shown the importance of the role of librarians. There is an important link between librarians and academics to work together so the expertise of both can be used for the greater good.”
On a more prosaic level, the fire has shown the need for insurance, recovery, preservation and disaster management. She says the fire at parliament in January is an example of how all agencies need to work together to protect important works. That fire gutted large parts of the National Assembly and destroyed a huge amount of irreplaceable items. The refurbishment and restoration have yet to start because of red tape.
“What’s happening at parliament is not ideal,” she says. “We need definitive processes and strong leadership in place to deal with this kind of event. As devastating as the fire was, we have gained a lot in terms of awareness.”
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